In the last few years, rug-pulls, hacks, and scams have become commonplace in web3, and the challenges of the bear market caused a lot of NFT, DeFi, and GameFi projects to shut shops without ever launching their products or creating value for the community that invested and supported them. A few projects with a team of resilient builders have stood out amidst these challenges, showcasing innovation and unwavering dedication to its community.
One such project is Bowled, a rising player in sports-tech and gameFi space founded by Ex-Mckinsey and Ex-Disney alums with deep expertise in sports and tech. From its inception, Bowled set out to bridge the gaps between IP owners and their fanbase by enabling IP owners to unlock new forms of interactions and fan engagement and empowering individuals to fuel their passion while unlocking lucrative social and financial rewards.
They kickstarted their journey in 2021 and eventually launched a platform for cricket, the second largest sport globally, by acquiring IPs of 900+ international players. The Bowled.io app is now a deep product with multiple avenues such as 8+ casual games, fantasy sports, IP-backed digital assets, a native marketplace and wallet, tournaments and more, all intricately interconnected by a unified economy. The app now has 150,000+ users.
One of their founders, Akshay Khandelwal (Ex-One Championship, Ex-McKinsey, INSEAD), says, “Our approach has been pretty simple and straightforward; we want to build something with real use cases that people would actually love and enjoy. We focused on building a fun and engaging product, creating an organic user base community and unlocking value for them at every step before launching the token.”
Navigating The Bear Market
Despite the prevailing market uncertainties and pessimism growing from the bear markets, Bowled not only remained steadfast in its commitment but also grew massively. They signed strategic partnerships with industry leaders such as Sky Mavis, the creators of Axie Infinity, gaming studios, guilds, and esports teams, and created a grassroots-level community. They also managed to get the legendary cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle to be their strategic advisor and brand ambassador.
Since cricket has a massive followership in India, they managed to acquire users organically. Rahul Singh, their other co-founder, who has previously launched the 2nd biggest sports league in India with Disney, comments, “The web3 penetration in India isn’t very deep. While we focus on educating our users and slowly onboarding them onto web3, we treat blockchain as a tech, not a business model. It enables user economies, value creation and transparency, but we always prioritise simplifying and creating a seamless user experience. The onboarding shouldn’t be complex and scary.”
They channelled their focus on running community initiatives such as the “Captains Program” that incentivised members to create content, “Build Your Own Game”, “#BuildWithBowled Bounty Program” and many more. They run the world’s largest and longest-running Twitter spaces for cricket enthusiasts to penetrate deep into the core fan base. They were also featured in the Top 25 Web3 Innovations List by YourStory and received numerous other validations.
Expanding to Other Sports and IPs
After relentlessly building for almost three years, Bowled plans to expand their offerings for other sports such as MMA, soccer, basketball, F1 and tennis to create a Sportsverse. They’ve also built a unique prediction market platform called Predify, which is currently on testnet. The aim is to add a prediction layer for all the gaming communities.
As they’ve built a robust tech stack combining JS microservices, utility sockets, node bridges, and zkEVMs, they offer ‘platform-as-a-service’ solutions, which already have growing interest from IPs beyond sports. Bowled recently hinted at an ICO of $BWLD, their ecosystem token, and the interests from various communities have been largely positive.
As the platform continues redefining the boundaries of IPs and sports gaming, one thing remains abundantly clear: Bowled.io is not just a gaming platform; it’s a movement changing the game, one player at a time.
Check out their socials and whitepaper to know more: https://beacons.ai/bowled.io.